SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, XV:1 #44 (March 1988): 1-11.

Arthur B. Evans

When discussing the 19th-century roots of modern science fiction (SF),
literary historians often tend to cite Jules Verne’s Voyages
Extraordinaires as an important generic starting point for this brand
of fiction. Such assertions, however, tend to suffer from reductionism;
they are almost always based on a number of loosely defined thematic
resemblances rather than on any rigorous examination of the narratological
functioning of these texts. Instead of a primitive variant of a later genre
(satisfying the literary historian’s need for origins and species
continuity), Verne’s “romans scientifiques” should be viewed as what they
were and are—i.e., the first important examples of scientificfiction in Western literature, quite distinct from SF.

The difference between these two literary cousins can be most succinctly
illustrated by analyzing the role played by scienceitself
in the discursive structure of these texts: i.e., the manner in which a
sustained scientific discourse is grafted onto a literary one. Scientific
fiction, as in the case of Verne, presumes a predominantly
pedagogical function for such scientific discourse. Its primary
goal is the implantation of (what is considered to be at the time)
factual scientific knowledge. On the other hand, science fiction, like
that produced by the later French SF writers Paul d’Ivoi, Gustave Le
Rouge, Albert Robida, and J.-H. Rosny Aîné, utilizes science—or, quite
frequently, pseudo-science—for purely fictional purposes. Its
primary goal is to act as a catalyst for plot progression and special
effects, as a powerful verisimilitude-builder, and as a means for
creating a kind of Brechtian “estrangement” in the reader. The didactic
discourse of scientific fiction rarely varies: it is linear,
accumulative, reductive, “non-distancing,” highly mimetic, generally
nominative, and deductively one-dimensional in its signifying structure.
The fictional discourse of SF, by contrast, uses a wide variety of
different hermeneutics, reflecting the very heterogeneous nature of this
genre. For example, in its satiric mode (e.g., Robida), it is playfully
non-mimetic, often purposely oxymoronic, and socially—as opposed to
scientifically—proselytetic in nature. In its fantastic mode (e.g., Le
Rouge), it is obscurantist, impressionistic, and sometimes even
metaphysical in its referentiality. In its speculative mode (e.g., Rosny
Aîné), it is most often non-mimetic, pluri-dimensional, and inductive in
the way it functions. In all cases, SF does not seek to teach
science through/with fiction, but rather to develop fiction
through/with science. The raison d’être of science in the
narrative process itself shifts from primary position to secondary, from
subject to context. It seeks no longer to address the reasoning intellect
but rather the creative imagination.

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To illustrate these general principles, I now propose to examine
some-what more closely this historical evolution of scientific fiction
into science fiction by considering some French texts from the late 19th
and early 20th centuries—taken from novels by the above-mentioned
authors. My focus will be primarily on the slowly changing role of
science in the signifying structure of these works, and the role of
didactic discourse as a kind of litmus-test for distinguishing
between these two similar distinct scientifico-literary genres.

First, let us consider a rather typical passage of scientific pedagogy
from Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires (the selection of these
examples being dictated as much by their brevity as by their
typicality—most of Verne’s pedagogical passages are much longer, often
continuing for many pages at a time). The following is taken from De
la Terre à la Lune (1865; From the Earth to the Moon), where
Michel Ardan is explaining the technical feasi-bility of a continuous
fresh air supply inside Barbicane’s space capsule:

The matters of food and lighting having been resolved, there remained
the question of the air supply....It would be necessary to constantly
renew the air inside the capsule. How? By a very simple procedure
invented by Reiset and Regnault and outlined by Michel Ardan during the
discussions of the meeting.

As we know, air is composed principally of 21 parts oxygen to 79 parts
nitrogen. And what occurs during respiration? A quite simple
phenomenon. Man absorbs the oxygen of the air...and exhales the
nitrogen. The exhaled air loses approximately 5% of its oxygen,
replaced by an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide which is produced by
the combustion taking place between the blood and the oxygen inhaled.
So, in an enclosed space and after a period of time, all the oxygen is
replaced by carbon dioxide, a gas that is essentially toxic.

The question comes down to this: ...(1) to replenish the oxygen, (2) to
get rid of the exhaled carbon dioxide. Both are easily accomplished by
means of potassium chlorate and potash.

Potassium chlorate is a kind of salt that takes the form of white
flakes; when brought to a temperature above 400 degrees, it changes
into potassium chloride, and the oxygen that it contains is
released....So much for replenishing the oxygen. As for the potash, it
hungers for the carbon dioxide mixed in the air, and one need simply
shake it to absorb the former and create potassium bicarbonate. So much
for the carbon dioxide.

In combining these two procedures, one can be sure that the vitiated
air in the capsule would be made breatheable. Two chemists, MM. Reiset
and Regnault, have successfully experimented with this. But, it must
also be noted that until now all their experiments have taken place ‘in
anima vili.’ However precise their results, exactly how this procedure
would work on humans was as yet unknown. (23:306-09—this and all other
translations are mine)

This passage is quite representative of Verne’s scientific pedagogy. It
is integrated—or, rather, inserted en bloc—into the text through
authoritative indirect discourse using one of the main characters of the
novel as a dis-cursive stepping-stone. The explanation is clear, concise,
and comprehensive, and it is structured very logically for immediate
understanding. And the facility of the “lesson” itself is underscored
again and again. The textual function of the names of the scientists is
to supplement the technical "author"itativeness of the theories presented
while also serving as a kind of effet de

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réel to build verisimilitude. Further, the inclusion of
certain other phatic devices such as the “As we know” (extremely typical of
Verne) enhances the persuasiveness of the text by assuming an a
priori knowledge of the fundamentals of chemistry on the part of the
reader/listener. But, of course, this does not prevent the narrator from
reiterating just the same all the scientific details of what “we”
supposedly already know! And the concluding reference to the
“still-in-the-experimental-stage” nature of the proposed technology serves
to anchor the passage in historical actuality as well as to add a measure
of suspense to the ensuing plot. It acts, moreover, as an authorial
insurance policy for Verne himself, just in case this particular piece of
technological extrapolation never materializes in the real world (as it
never would, of course, because—“as we know”—Verne’s basic premise
concerning the chemical composition of air is incorrect: he, and Mssrs
Reiset and Regnault, are basing their ideas on chemical principles
formulated earlier in the century by Lavoisier—principles proven erroneous
only in the 1880s and 1890s, about 20 years after Verne wrote De la
Terre à la Lune and after which he no longer mentions the feasibility
of such a device).

The next quotation is from Paul d’Ivoi’s novel called La Diane de
l’Archipel—also known as Jean Fanfare—published in 1897 as
part of d’Ivoi’s continuing series called (very suggestively) the
Voyages Excentriques. The scientific pedagogy displayed in
d’Ivoi’s narratives, while less overtly elaborated than in Verne’s,
continues nevertheless to play an important role in his individual
fictional recipe. Following the same “travel and learn” narrative format
used in Verne’s highly successful Voyages Extraordinaires, these
novels were part of the massive influx of didactic adventure stories
(oriented principally towards youth) that penetrated the French
publishing market during the final years of the 19th century and the
pre-World War I years of the 20th. As we shall see, the 21 novels of Paul
d’Ivoi’s Voyages Excentriques provide both a thematic and
narratological transition between Verne’s generally cautious scientific
didacticism and the more fanciful fictions of Le Rouge, Robida, and Rosny
Aîné.

In this excerpt, for example, the heroes are being introduced to the
marvels of the “Karrovarka,” a go-anywhere, armor-plated, all-terrain
vehicle (a very Vernian prototype). Powered by electricity, it features,
among its other wonders, an air filtration system similar to the one
previously described in De la Terre à la Lune:

‘For the moment, dear sirs,’ he said softly, ‘I will add only this: You
can be assured of hygienically pure air in your sleeping quarters. So
that its purity remains at 100%, it is essential that the air not
vitiate like in the bedrooms of people who are sedentary....In order to
accomplish this, I crack open the valve of this metal receptacle
attached to the rear partition. It’s a tank of oxygen. This salutary
gas will flow drop by drop, replacing that used by your lungs. There
are imperceptible perforations in the floor of your compartment,
connecting it with one in the rear of the Karrovarka. Located therein
are trays of potash which, as we know, is hungry for carbon dioxide and
exerts a veritable attraction on it. In other words, your air will
automatically cleanse itself of those products of combustion which are
likely to vitiate.’

‘Marvelous!’ exclaimed Jean. (2:2:224)

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Here, the parallels with Verne’s text are unmistakable—even to the
epithet “hungry” and the “as we know” of the ninth line, the latter
perhaps directly addressing the reader’s recall of Verne’s novel of 30
years earlier. But what is truly interesting is the extent to which this
same piece of scientific pedagogy is now muted and
secondary to the fiction itself. The technology portrayed is no
longer essential to maintaining the lives of the protagonists; it is now
a simple hygienic convenience. The chemical composition of air and the
mechanics of respiration are no longer explained in detail but simply
passed over as “this salutary gas” and “those products of combustion.”
And Verne’s “potassium chlorate”(originally brought along to produce
oxygen) completely disappears—to be replaced by a simple “tank of
oxygen.” Could it be, given the date of the text, that d’Ivoi was aware
of the scientific advances made in this field since Verne’s time?
Perhaps. By 1895, the British inventor William Hampson and the German
physicist Carl Lindé had discovered how to liquefy oxygen, and it had
already entered into common commercial use. But it is much more likely
that d’Ivoi simply wished to move the focus of his text away from
scientific didacticism per seand more toward the results that such
science could offer his “excentric” fictions in terms of exoticism, plot
progression, and ideological overtones. In other words, d’Ivoi chose to
adopt Verne’s overall narratological format, but he then watered down its
(sometimes quite pedantic) pedagogical character.

This phenomenon—where the role of science is changed from subject to
object, from being the primary subject of the plot to being an object
which functions as an accessory to the plot—is even more pronounced in
many of Gustave Le Rouge’s novels. The following passage is from La
Princesse des Airs (1902; The Princess of the Skies), the
title of which is taken from the name of a flying machine that
incorporates the futuristic technology of Verne’s balloon and airplane
narratives, and more. Among its other gadgets, one finds a similar
air-supply system:

The outer shell of the Princess of the Skies was constructed in
order to be able to be hermetically sealed.

A system of rubber membranes could be placed along the edges of the
doors, shutting off all contact with the exterior atmosphere.

This mechanism had been adopted so as to permit flying at great
altitudes.

In that event, the travellers would be able to breathe thanks to liquid
air; huge tanks containing chemical substances similar to potash would
be placed here and there to absorb the carbon dioxide produced by
respiration and to purify the air in the cabin. (2:5:259-60)

Here, the bottled oxygen has become “liquid air” and the absorption
chemical is an unnamed substance described as “similar to potash.”
“Liquid air” was the common, non-scientific name given to liquefied
oxygen around the turn of the century. By using such a term, Le Rouge is
not only moving his discourse away from a technical to a vernacular mode,
but is also taking full advantage of the exotic oxymoronic qualities that
the word itself adds to his fiction. Le Rouge tends to come back to this
particular item again and again in his narrative whenever a deus ex
machina scientific solution is needed to shore up verisimilitude or
to heighten the melodrama.

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For example, in his initial description of the Princess, the
inventor Alban points out:

The aircraft would remain airborne only because of its speed. As soon
as it was slowed down, it would, because of its massive weight, fall
like a stone. I solved this problem by installing around the perimeter
of the aircraft a series of steel cylinders filled with liquid air with
the valves pointing downward. When I release the liquid air, the upward
thrust it delivers to the aircraft allows the Princess to land
with the grace and the gentleness of a butterfly alighting on a flower.
(1:3:75)

Here, liquid air serves as a kind of retro-rocket to break the fall of
the landing aircraft. And in the following passage, when they are forced
to make a crash-landing in the Himalayas and a youthful passenger is near
death due to injuries received, it is again liquid air that saves the
day:

‘All that’s left to try,’ thought Alban, ‘is a high energy procedure,
but it might be dangerous....Bring me a cylinder of liquid air....The
temperature of 400 degrees below zero that it takes to change air from
its gaseous state to liquid will undoubtedly have a sufficiently
energetic effect on Ludovic to help him regain consciousness. Liquid
air, by the instantaneous and dramatic shock that it gives to organic
tissue, is the only thing that can bring him back to life.’

The right arm of Ludovic was bared, and a first application of the
liquified gas was attempted.

The child’s nervous system shuddered and his heart began to beat more
rapidly.

His pulse, until now imperceptible, became normal.

By the fifth application, Ludovic opened his glazed eyes...the child
was saved! All he needed now would be some rest and care. (2:5:267)

The application directly to the skin of a “high energy” cold-pack of
minus 400 degrees (Centigrade) brings the young man back to life. Indeed!
Quite obviously, Le Rouge crosses here (and elsewhere in his text) the
boundary separating science from magic. But it is interesting to note
that the narrative mechanism involved is always the same: an incarnation
of advanced scientific technology—very mysterious in nature and totally
unexplained as to its physical properties—is summoned up as a kind of
textual “magic wand” to create verisimilitude and to expand the thematic
possibilities of the plot. Le Rouge’s work is particularly rich when
studying this fictional shift in the portrayal of science from pedagogy
toward “special effects.” His novels stand as a kind of thematic (and
structural) intermediary between the Verne and d’Ivoi narrative model and
those of Robida and Rosny Aîné.

Although Le Rouge still continues to anchor his “imaginary voyage”
fictions in didactic (or pseudo-didactic) scientific passages such as
this one, he is also shifting what had been the traditional relationship
of the reader to this type of text onto new cognitive ground. Here it is
not yet a question of the reader’s constant confrontation with a host of
non-mimetic referents or seemingly empty signifiers—as we shall find in
Robida and, even more so, in Rosny Aîné. But in Le Rouge’s texts, the
evolution towards this new “SF” discursive configuration is already
palpable.

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The position of Albert Robida in this evolution is a curious one: the
less one is familiar with the actual texts, the more one tends to identify
Robida’s technological romances with Verne’s Voyages
Extraordinaires—especially when both are viewed in retrospect as early
variants (“grandfathers”) of modern SF. In reality, they are very
different. The distinction may be most simply described as follows: the
scientific didacticism, a fundamental structural feature of Verne’s fiction
(and still used, although in a quite different manner and for other
narrative ends, by authors such as d’Ivoi or Le Rouge), is completely
absent from Robida’s texts. The futuristic technology portrayed by Robida
is always a “given,” neither explained nor even made to appear in any way
wondrous or supernatural. But Robida’s fanciful extrapolations cannot be
simply categorized as fantasy, in the true sense of that word. For, in
terms of verisimilitude and mimesis, his novels are solidly anchored (from
a 19th-century perspective) in a realistic representation of daily and
family life in France—much like, earlier in the century, Balzac’s Scènes
de la vie privéeor Scènes de la vie parisienne.

It is this rather oxymoronic (and often hilarious) juxtaposition of
futuristic technology and 19th-century life-styles, beliefs, and social
institutions which characterizes the vast majority of Robida’s fictions:
husbands and wives now argue about their daughter’s dowry over the
“telephonoscope”; traditional weekend outings to the country are done via
the “pneumatic tube” or “aircoach”; the bourgeois home is decorated with
artistic works of “photo paintings” or “galvanosculpture,” and so forth.

The following, quite typically “Robidian,” passage is taken from the
opening scene of Le Vingtième Siècle (1883; The Twentieth
Century) and will serve to illustrate this oxymoronic character of
his narratives:

The month of September 1952 was drawing to a close. Summer had been
magnificent; the sun, cooler now, bathed the golden days of autumn with
a soft and caressing glow.

Airship omnibus B, whose route went from the central Tube station on
boulevard Montmartre to the aristocratic suburbs of
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was following the winding lines of the outer
avenues and cruising at the statutory altitude of 250 meters.

The arrival of the train at the Brittany Tube had quickly filled a
dozen airbuses parked above the station. A swarm of aircabs, veloces,
skiffs, flashes, and baggage tartans (whose heavy-winged tugs that can
barely do 30 kilometers an hour) bustled to and fro....

The passengers of Airship omnibus B were, for the most part, Parisian
businessmen coming home with their families from their villas at
Saint-Malo or from little picnics in the rocks of Brittany. This was
obvious by the many empty picnic baskets, the plant collections, and
the shrimp nets of the children....

Seated gracefully on the folding stools of the rear platform were three
young girls dressed in high school uniforms....The two brunettes were
daughters of the billionaire banker Raphael Ponto, one of these stars
of the Stock Market around whom gravitates a veritable host of
inconsequential millionaires, like so many satellites. The blond girl,
named Hélène Colobry, was an orphan and a charge of the banker Ponto,
who was a distant relative of her family. (1:1-3)

The typical reader of late-19th-century France would undoubtedly find the
mention of the year “1952” at the outset of this text very estranging
(and would accordingly expect a significant measure of

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radical “otherness” in what is to follow). But these effects are
promptly mitigated by the reassuring and quite poetic description of the
changing seasons—a recognizable and reassuring literary motif and a solid
touchstone for establishing the plus ça change, plus c’est la même
chose tone of the entire fiction to come. But this quite comforting
Romantic topos is then followed by a rapid succession of textual “nova”—a
series of totally non-mimetic technicisms and indirect referents which, one
might think, would serve to substantiate the reader’s earlier anticipations
concerning this tale of the future. But in reality, they provide the reader
with only mildly alienating stepping-stones to his or her visualization of
this new world. Terms such as “Airship omnibus B,” or “aircabs”
(portmanteau words, combining the old with the new), “Tubes” (an English
term for underground railroads, perhaps already in use during this period,
but still quite exotic, especially when later expanded to “Brittany
Tube”!), “the suburbs of Saint-Germain-en-Laye” (a comfortably recognizable
toponym—like that of the “boulevard Montmartre”—but now the suburb is seen
as a part of the city proper, indicating, in indirect fashion, how immense
Paris has become). All these references gently ease the reader into the
realm of a distant tomorrow. Further, the nautical names carried by these
many strange vehicles of tomorrow—“airship,” “skiffs,” “tartans,” and
“tugs”—provide a concrete metaphorical link enabling the reader to
associate this scene with the standard seaport motif and thereby to
assimilate it without difficulty (although the terms chosen are, ironically
and most likely deliberately, archaic ones). And on the purely denotative
level, even the most denotatively unusual of these vehicles—“veloces” and
“flashes”—seem to literally define themselves. Finally, mentioning that the
heavy-winged “tugs” fly “barely” 30 kilometers an hour functions, at least
within the 19th-century sociolect, as a kind of reverse anachronism of
satiric humor, a kind of inside joke between author and reader,
considerably lightening the enumerative and technical tone of the passage
as well as indicating (again, in an oblique manner) how speed is a purely
relative matter.

Continuing its practice of oscillating between the hyperbolically
futuristic and the commonplace, the text then focuses on the passengers.
In spite of their milieu and their having apparently travelled great
distances for a “little picnic” (another oblique reference—revealing the
social implications of air-travel, rendered with humorous irony by the
use of the word “little”), a quite typical 19th century family is
portrayed—right down to their empty picnic baskets and the other standard
paraphernalia of such outings. And among the three high-school girls
(complete with uniforms) is one who is undoubtedly destined to become the
heroine of the story: in proper 19th century novelistic fashion, she is
an orphan and blond. Lastly, mixing the same indirect reference procedure
with humor and an astronomical metaphor, Robida characterizes Raphael
Ponto as a billionaire banker and one of those “stars” of the Paris
stock-market “around whom gravitates a veritable host of inconsequential
millionaires.” If the financial criteria have changed in the future, the
typical readers say to themselves, the social ones certainly have not!

Thus Robida’s scientific technology is rooted neither in pedagogy nor in
the need to justify the verisimilitude of his heroes’ and heroines’
actions. Nor, however, can it be said to be totally and entirely
gratuitous: it serves as an effective and humorous

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spring-board for Robida’s social commentary and satire. Readers are
not expected to truly believe in the scientific marvels of this future
Earth. Rather they are expected to maintain one foot in the present and to
continually compare the two societies in question.

On the other hand, this procedure does serve certain implicit pedagogical
ends—if not for the instruction of science, at least for the
acclimatization of humankind to science. And it does so in two
ways. First, by the very nature of the narrative itself, the typical
19th-century reader is led to conceive of a world much like his or her
own, but now filled with new-fangled gadgets the functioning of which he
or she can’t possibly understand—undoubtedly very evocative of his or her
own experiences during an historical period that witnessed the advent of
telegraph, electric lights, phonographs, and motorcars. But the text also
implies that such an understanding doesn’t really matter. The basic
social structures are the same, the human problems are the same, and this
strange and potentially alienating technology appears to be fully
integrated into the daily lives of those fictional characters who,
themselves, are very much the same. Further, if the technology itself is
alternately portrayed as comical, problematic, or even dangerous
(especially in its military applications), it is most often shown to be
subordinate to humanity. It is, as always, human nature that
dictates its use and misuse. Hence, although Robida is traditionally
revered as an imaginative ancestor of modern SF (which he definitely is,
at least for some brands of SF), the
“let’s-look-at-ourselves-through-foreign-eyes” dynamics of Robida’s
narratives also tend to identify him as a direct literary descendant of
writers of social satire such as Montesquieu and Voltaire.

With the scientific fantasies of J.-H. Rosny Aîné, however, we enter the
world of SF proper. Correspondingly, intertextual overlaps with the
narratological character of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires begin
to grow weaker and progressively more tenuous. Not only is there a
complete absence of didacticism and of the quasi-scientific,
credibility-building explanations of technology (as noted in d’Ivoi and
Le Rouge), but also the final link with the mimetic representation of
reality itself is broken. Readers are thrust fully into the realm of the
alien “other” and are required to reconstruct their referential
coordinates ex nihilo in order to assimilate the text. This
“filling in the blanks” procedure becomes the predominant reading mode
for this brand of narrative—most often unaided by the text’s semantic
content or the visible presence of a narrator. And the traditional
“imaginary voyage” narrative format now becomes a (sometimes
disconcerting) journey into a fully-estranged world of seemingly absent
paradigms and non-referentiality.

The following passage, found at the outset of Rosny’s La Mort de la
Terre (1910; The Death of the Earth), is among the first such
texts in French SF that features this new narratological formula:

The terrible North Wind had become silent. It’s harsh voice had, for
two weeks, been filling the oasis with fear and sadness. It had been
necessary to erect the storm-wall and to implant the hooks of elastic
silica. Finally, the oasis was beginning to cool down.

Targ, the guardian of the Great Planetary, felt one of those sudden
pangs of joy which brightened men’s lives during the holy times of
Water....His face

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was dark and swarthy, his eyes and hair as black as anthracite. Like all
of the Last Men, he had developed a very large chest and a shrunken
belly. His hands were delicate, his jaw small, and his limbs indicated
more agility than strength. Clothing of mineral fibers, as supple and
warm as ancient wool, snugly encased his body....

Since the Great Planetary was located on the border between the oasis
and the desert, Targ could observe the sinister landscape of granite,
silica, and minerals. A plain of desolation stretched out as far as the
foothills of the barren mountains, devoid of glaciers, waterholes,
blades of grass, or even patches of lichen. In this desert of death,
the oasis, with its rectilinear groves and metallic houses, seemed like
a wretched stain.

Targ felt the weight of the vast solitude and the implacable mountains.
He lifted his head melancholically and looked at the conch of the Great
Planetary. The conch spread its sulphur corolla towards the jagged
mountaintops. Made of arcum, as sensitive as the retina of an eye, it
recorded only those rhythms emanating from the other oases far away,
and it was calibrated so as to squelch those that the guardian need not
answer. (1:126-27)

The narrative voice alone of this opening passage is sufficient to
establish its “other world” and “other time” tonality, which is
subsequently concretized by the semantics of the text’s content. The
capitalization of words such as “North Wind,” “Great Planetary,” “Water,”
and “Last Men” lends a kind of primitive mythological and/or epic quality
to the scene described, and the repeated tribal-like anthropomorphizing
of the elements enhances this impression. But the identity of the
narrator, obviously indigenous to this place and time, is not (and never
will be) revealed to the reader.

Further, this primitivism is strangely juxtaposed with signs of futurism:
the association of “oasis” and “the holy times of Water” with the title
of the novel, along with the altered physiology of Targ himself (who is
one of the “Last Men”) clearly places the events in a distant tomorrow—at
the end of humanity’s supremacy on Earth. Thus, the reader surmises, this
must be a tale of the far future where humanity has devolved into
primitivism and now lives in isolated oases as the world turns to dust.
Correct! But it is only by combining a number of disparate textual
references and filling in a variety of paradigmatic blanks that the
reader can, inductively, arrive at this conclusion. This “oblique” method
of referentiality, first noted in Robida, serves here to reconstruct an
entire imaginary world, instead of a simple linear extrapolation of the
known.

But the signifying process in this text then becomes more complex as the
reader encounters such references as “hooks of elastic silica,”
“[c]lothing of mineral fibers, as supple and warm as ancient wool,” and
“metallic houses”—not to mention the mysterious “Great Planetary” itself:
this “conch” that “spread its sulphur corolla towards the jagged
mountaintops” and which was “made of arcum, as sensitive as the retina of
the eye.” The phrases in the first group, although wholly non-mimetic in
nature, are nevertheless similar to Robida’s portmanteau words: while
semantically juxtaposing the old with the new, they generate concrete
paradigms and visual associations which, although somewhat odd, are still
able to be rationalized by the reader. The second group, on the other
hand, pushes the reader’s rationalization/imagination to its breaking
point, nearly short-circuiting the signifying process itself. On
the

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semantic level, for example, the inorganic is identified with the
organic (“Great Planetary...conch...sulphur corolla”), compounding to an
even greater degree those semantic difficulties first encountered in the
apparent oxymorons of “mineral fibers” and “metallic houses.” And, even on
the purely lexical level, words normally used as adjectives become nouns
(“Planetary”), nouns become adjectives (“sulphur”), and other words present
in the text are neologisms and totally of the author’s invention (e.g.,
“arcum”)—requiring the reader to go well beyond the normal mechanisms of
signification in order to create meaning.

Rosny’s fiction thus spans the gamut of several signifying practices,
ranging from common mimetic denotation to purely impressionistic
non-referentiality. In Rosny’s narratives—unlike those of Verne, d’Ivoi,
Le Rouge, or Robida—it is the dynamics of language itself that
effectively adds yet another level of “otherness” to the reader’s
assimilation of the text’s “alien” content.

The earlier “scientific novel” format has obviously reached a totally new
generic configuration: the Vernian journey through space to distant lands
and the Robidian journey through time to distant millennia has now become
a journey through the (distancing) signifying structure of the text
itself. The reader’s fictional travels, used earlier as a vehicle for
scientific pedagogy and/or social satire, now becomes a narrative end
in itself. The overt textual presentation of
“lessons-to-be-learned” (normally the result of an instructive dialogue
between teacher and pupil characters who are embedded in a fictional
milieu that is highly mimetic and that initially elicits such
discussions) is replaced by a growing proliferation of absent paradigms
and non-mimetic signifiers, all of which require the active participation
of the reader in order to generate meaning. Hence the inherent
didacticism of this new brand of fictional discourse is no longer
scientific; it is hermeneutic. It no longer seeks to expand the reader’s
knowledge of science, but rather to expand the reading experience itself.
Its goal is no longer factual. It is textual. And as such, it can no
longer be termed scientific fiction, but rather what the 20th
century has come to call the genre of science fiction.

ABSTRACT

SF needs to be theoretically distinguished from its generic cousin
scientific fiction. As an early example of the latter, Jules Verne’s novels
are structurally different from most SF. Verne’s Voyages
Extraordinaires were intentionally geared towards the pedagogical
implantation of factual scientific knowledge. And the narratological
blueprint of each “roman scientifique” in this series strongly reflects
this intent. By examining diachronically the place and function of such
scientifically didactic discourse in the works of certain French authors of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries—writers like Verne, d’Ivoi, Le
Rouge, Robida, and Rosny Aîné—one can discern a palpable evolution in the
narrative recipes used. On the one hand, the deductive (and often
reductive) passages of scientific pedagogy become progressively muted and
supplanted by more inductive hermeneutic structures which serve to enhance
fictional verisimilitude. On the other, textual referentiality increasingly
becomes more oblique and non-mimetic, affecting the reading process itself.
It is through an investigation of these narratological phenomena that one
can best differentiate scientific fiction from science fiction as well as
witness the historical transmutation of the former into the latter. (ABE)